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A Country Girl, A Big Girl, tells the tale of eleven-year-old Kitty Murphy and her countryside life in 1950's Ireland. She lives with her parents, daddy, John and pregnant mammy, Margaret, two older brothers, Paddy and Mick, and her two sisters, Peggy and Marie. Kitty has another sister, Kathleen, but Kitty does not know where Kathleen is. Whenever anyone asks of Kathleen's whereabouts, Kitty must say that Kathleen is "away." The story begins at the end of the summer in 1954. The Murphy family are getting ready for Sunday mass and there is excitement as the parish is expecting a new priest, the youthful Father Kelly. The next day, Peggy leaves the farm to attend the Domestic Economy School. Kitty is nervous after Peggy's departure. With Peggy now gone, Kitty is the eldest daughter, the 'big girl' in the home.Kitty has a new teacher this term - the wicked Ms. O'Doherty. Ms. O'Doherty isn't afraid to punish her pupils for their misbehaviour. In school, Kitty fears Ms. O'Doherty's ruler and Mr. O'Sullivan, the principal's cane; at home, she fears her mammy's wooden spoon and her daddy's belt. She finds it difficult to step into her role as the 'big girl.'In November, Kitty's innocence suffers a fatal blow. After the family head into town to sell butter and eggs, they find their sheepdog, Kim sick at home. Kitty's brothers speak of rabies, dead rabbits and myxomatosis but it turns out that Kim is pregnant. Kim dies giving birth. Kitty is the one who finds her and discovers the puppies. But Kitty's daddy drowns the puppies. Meanwhile, Kitty's daddy grows sicker. He complains of a lump in his stomach which turns out to be cancer. As his health deteriorates, the baby in Kitty's mammy's belly grows. On Christmas Day, the baby comes but he does not survive the birth. The baby is buried in a cillín and Kitty's mammy plunges into a depression.In spring, Kitty finds out, from Peggy and Paddy, that Kathleen is in a Mother and Baby Home. Kitty finds it hard to fathom and goes on to suffer nightmares where nuns are cruel to her.On Easter Sunday, there is an accident on the farm. Paddy and Mick have taken over the farm because their daddy is too sick. Kitty has taken over the domestic duties because her mammy is still in and out of bed. Mr. Byrne - their neighbour - is kicked by a bull and dies as a result. Kitty finds out that deaths occur in threes. The day Mr. Byrne dies is the day she starts counting. The number eventually evolves to two out of three when Mrs. O'Reilly dies.At the end of the story, the number comes to three out of three. Kitty finds her daddy's body asleep in his armchair. The wake and funeral go by in a blur and the story finishes with Kitty readying herself for her first summer as a big girl.

The story of Cliff Emerson, a man with cerebral palsy and a big heart but no voice, and his friendship with Ayo, a new caregiver who listens differently-and takes big risks to help him feel more human. Cliff's unheard narrative, told from his perspective, traces the history of his care, from his time in the state hospital to his move into the group home where he has lived for twenty years. Though it was designed to help him grow his independence, his group home program often fails him. His staff are lazy and complacent and their superiors aloof and unobservant. It seems like Cliff's the only one who sees this-until the day that Ayo starts. Ayo is new not only to Cliff's home but to America. Where he came from and why he left are mysteries. He doesn't like to talk about it much. But his optimism, like his smile, is infectious, and Cliff soon learns to trust him. For Cliff, it is a revelation, being understood by someone without having said a word. All that was required was willingness and patience, things staff haven't given him in a long time. As Cliff begins to see himself through Ayo's caring gaze, he starts believing that he deserves and is able to live a life as full as anyone's. The challenge is convincing those in power of this truth. Reminiscent of Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this novel is unflinching in its portrayal of disability care and also, more broadly, of life in America. It is touching and darkly comic, at times bordering on the absurd. But at its core, it is the story of a man in search of something meaningful in a time and place opposed to his whole being, and yet who, with Ayo's help, manages to maintain his sense of dignity and personhood-and, for the first time, to taste real freedom.

Can we separate our personal experiences from the world we live in? Fred Pollack has wrestled with this question. In his work, individuals exist firmly in the context of their historical moment. The self and its depths don't orbit reality but reflect it, and it reflects them; the task of imagination is to capture that shared light. This book will take you on many journeys. Pollack writes about people and societies across time and space. You will meet characters both real and fantastical, in the present, past, and future. They are always navigating relationships, some loving, some inspiring; often with forces that have, or claim to have, power over them. The subject-matter of The Beautiful Losses ranges from the hopes of an eight-year-old scientist ("And So You Shall") to Biden's infrastructure plan ("Infrastructure"). There are fantasies set in the poet's DC neighborhood ("Events of Today"), in the Middle Ages ("The Bells"), and among alien civilizations ("Entanglement"). Pollack imagines the imaginative lives of others ("Friends"), sometimes their real lives ("Darlin' you just sorta"); often, as in the title poem, a near or distant future. According to Pollack, "A strong poem is about something that is important, but which is not perceived by the ideologies of its time or expressible in their language." Most of these poems combine lyric and narrative elements. They read like stories. Pollack says his secret ambition is - without sacrificing compression, symbolism, or subtlety - to reclaim territory that poetry ceded long ago to the novel. In his introduction to an early book-length poem of Pollack's, Mark Jarman wrote: "(Pollack) shows us the life, both real and ideal, of our era, the gods we worship, our customs and traditions, our folkways and social norms, our dreams and nightmares, all in a voice and rhythm that are as much of our time as Homer's were of his."

A collection of 62 intensely atmospheric poems.In this richly varied collection, Peter Mladinic''s myriad voices reveal his extraordinary gift for lyric storytelling. The speakers in his fresh and unexpected dramatic monologues populate a universe of recognizably American experience, telling of joys and horrors, childhood memories, murders committed, lovers desired and lost, lives fractured, heartbreak endured and survived (or not). An always believable surrealism of the everyday sometimes takes us into the dream life of families, births and deaths, moments full of illumination and love, sorrow and exhilaration. Mladinic''s poems are all about the inescapable reality of others whom he fully imagines in all their unforgettable poignance and irrepressible vitality. His disciplined, energetic, highly pressured free verse and brilliant attention to local detail celebrate life - its tragedy, its comedy, its romance and abundance - all the while taking into account, with the deepest compassion, the relentless passage of time.- Elizabeth Frank, Pulitzer Prize winner in 1986 for her biography Louise Bogan: A Portrait.